“We got him? Is he on? I’m doing great with these phone calls today, so great. They took a poll, I got a 93% approval on the phone calls, which is the highest anyone’s ever gotten. History of polls, just great. Is he there? Where’s my Mexican? Hey! Speedy! You there?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s me, the Presidente. Mucho, mucho presidente.”

“Like I’ve told you every time we’ve spoken, I speak fluent English.”

“Speedy, I’m up to my waist in dead kids up here. They ruined Infrastructure Week.”

“Jesus.”

“We’re gonna arm the teachers. Give ’em the most beautiful training, like a week or whatever. Bad guy comes in? Bing bing bing. Now you’ve got a hero. I mean, teachers are heroes always, sure, okay, but this? This would be great for me. Lunch-ladies, too. The ones with the hairnets? They get guns, too. Everyone in the building, train ’em, great.”

“That’s your plan?”

“Or maybe I do an assault-weapons ban. Maybe that. Could be a little of both. I could even do a bipartisan. Two weeks, I’ll tell you in two weeks, but everyone is going to be mucho, mucho happy with the plan. But don’t worry, I’m not like Hillary. I won’t grab your guns.”

“No. You don’t grab guns.”

“I went down, Florida, I stopped in on the way to Mar-A-Lago. I saw some of the kids who got shot, even though most of their parents did not vote for me, and no one in the lying media gave me any credit at all for that. Real messes, these kids. Some bad smells, I gotta admit. But they’ll be fine. They’ll be okay. They knew what they signed up for.”

“Wow. Mr. President, we made this call to discuss the particulars of our upcoming meeting.”

“Out of respect, I didn’t golf that day.”

“Please. Please can we stick to the agenda of the call?”

“Okay, Jose.”

“Mr. President, you must not say that Mexico will pay for the wall during our press conference.”

“I hear you.”

“Is that a ‘yes?'”

“I hear you.”

“Goddammit, are you just reading off a notecard?”

“I hear you.”

“Donald, you cannot say that Mexico will pay for the wall.”

“How can I not? Listen, Gordita, I promised my base the wall, and a Trump always keeps his word.”

MEXICAN LAUGHING NOISE

“Frankly, I don’t see how you don’t want to pay for it. Many people are saying that the shooter from Florida was with MS-13.”